Enigma
by Laurus Nobilis
Summary: A Moon priestess and a wandering fortune teller, in your regular fantasy setting. AU, oneshot.


**Disclaimer:** All characters belong to CLAMP.

**Author's note:** This one-shot AU was written for the LJ community "31 days".

**Enigma**

He wasn't the first fortune teller who came to town, but he was different from all the previous ones. Kaho had enough power of her own to realize that this one did have the Sight, as well as many more years behind him than he showed. The villagers seemed to notice it too, almost instinctively, and they gathered around him as he flipped his beautiful cards one by one. That was just for entertainment, he warned them; the serious readings had to be individual.

Although he didn't add "and paid", they understood. Most people began to leave, while Kaho still watched from afar. He gave a few trinkets to some children – made by himself, he claimed, and if they weren't magical at least they appeared to be so – and when he was left alone, he didn't seem disappointed by the lack of customers.

He turned to Kaho instead, and greeted her with an almost imperceptible movement of his head.

"Would you like a reading, Moon priestess?"

His smile was entrancing, but she declined. She didn't need one.

o O o

The next day, she found him at the public square again. There was nobody around him, not yet, and he was polishing a metallic object. A bell, she thought, but she didn't ask if she was right. What she wanted to know was something else.

"I thought fortune tellers kept traveling when they found no customers," she said. He smiled a little, but kept his sight on his work.

"People will come to me when they need to," he replied. "Or do you want me to leave, priestess?"

"It was a question, not an attack," she told him, upset by his answer. "And I have a name."

"So do I," he said, "but you did not ask for it."

"All right," she compromised. "What is your name, fortune teller?"

"It's Clow," he answered, "Kaho."

She frowned. Was he trying to impress her, to stand his ground against the local Seer? Or did he just want to show off?

"I have the Sight, too," she said. "You know that."

He nodded.

"I know."

"Then why do you still speak as if you knew more than me?"

"Because I do," he said. He looked up at her for the first time, and he chuckled. "Yes, I think I do."

o O o

She went to the lake to scry that night. But the moon didn't give her any answers.

o O o

A Moon priestess in such a tiny village didn't have many duties. It was easy to find the time to sit next to a wandering fortune teller, especially when he didn't seem to have much to do either. He had been right; people _had_ started to come to him. But they were still very few, and he spent most of the day working on the toys and trinkets he gave to the children of the town – for free, Kaho noticed, which didn't fit with anything she had heard about his kind.

She soon got used to his talk, his tales about strange and distant lands. She had never left her hometown, and knew that she never would. He had a way with words, too; he could weave wonderful stories, or he could speak for the longest time without truly saying anything.

"Are you a mage?" she asked him once. He looked at her for a moment, always with that enigmatic smile on his lips.

"I am many things," he replied at last. Kaho chuckled.

"You certainly talk like one."

"Is that so?"

She smiled back at him, resting her head on her hand.

"You never give a straight answer," she said. He blinked at her reply, and laughed.

"Then you must be one, too," he pointed out. Now it was Kaho herself who was surprised.

"Why would you say that? You haven't asked me anything."

"Others have," he answered, winking, and then he would say no more.

o O o

Once again, she tried to scry that night. The moon, just like the previous time, told her nothing.

If she wanted to find out how he knew that, how he could tell about the people who brought her questions and about the mysterious answers that they got, then she would simply have to ask him. But she wouldn't do that. He didn't need that kind of proof to know that his Sight was greater than hers.

Now, however, it had been proved to Kaho. And perhaps that _was_ an answer, after all.

o O o

He didn't change the way he talked to her; he still didn't give straight answers, or call her by her name. He still wore that little smile all the time, that wavered between disturbing and enchanting.

"It's annoying, the way you speak," she told him.

"Ah," he said, grinning, "but you still come to talk to me."

He was right. And that, Kaho thought, was the most annoying of it all. He was arrogant, and whimsical, and too enigmatic.

But she was in love with him. And she told him as much.

For a few moments, that left him truly silent. When he looked at her at last, his answer was of the usual kind.

"Do you really know me, priestess?"

He spread the cards in a fan, with their backs facing her. Kaho played along. She picked one of them and turned it around to see what she had chosen.

_The Illusion_, read its inscription. He grinned.

oO o

On the night of the full moon, she saw his reflection on the lake, right behind her. But it was not because of her Sight. When she turned around, he was standing there, holding the bell he had been making all this time.

"It's for the shrine," he told her.

Kaho didn't answer immediately. She took it softly, as if it would break, so delicate it looked; but it was strong, and its sound was beautiful and clear. When she tried to thank him, though, the words that came out were not the ones she meant to say.

"Are you going to leave now?"

"Do you want me to leave, priestess?"

He grinned and, before she could answer, he held her face in his hands and kissed her.

"Moon priestesses are fickle," he said quietly, "and I am not the kind of man who settles down."

"Then we will need no explanations," she replied, and stopped to look at his smile before she kissed him back.


End file.
